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The Amazing Ways to Maximizing The Online Games For Developing Child's Positive Character

When many parents reject the presence of online games in their children's lives, we are not. Since our son was a little boy, we introduced him to online games to have fun while learning. But we don't remember what online games he played for the first time, I just remember that he was amazed watching at the computer screen that there were objects he could control, unlike the movies that he only enjoyed passively.

More and more online games he can play and we still allow him. Does my son addict to games? No, because we always invite him to be able to control himself and manage his own time in playing games. Until now, when he was a teenager, my son had never had trouble quitting games when he had to stop, which is when he considered it too much, for example when he had been playing for three hours. He often doesn't play games all day, and that's ok for him. You can compare this with children who are prohibited from playing online games who are always looking for ways to be able to play without their parents knowing, this is certainly not good.

Why do we allow our son to play games from early childhood? It's simple because my husband and I like to play online games, and we can manage time by allocating our time according to our job priority, this is what we want to teach to our son. As a child who is raised in the digital age, it is impossible for us to completely remove him from online games, in our opinion, it is very unwise. What is the wise thing to do is to teach the attitude of responsibility so that children can control themselves.

How do we get our son to control himself in playing online games and what did he get from this parenting process in his teenage period?

First, we introduce children to games since they can read and recognizing numbers. That way he can read the rules of the game, the concept of time, so he knows when he should stop. After that, we can educate other knowledge about online games easily.

Second, at the beginning he got acquainted with online games, we familiarize him with playing online games for a maximum of 10 minutes, then increase with age, until at the age of 16th he plays games for 5 hours a day which are divided into several times a day. Then at the age of 17th, we let him set his own time and duration for playing online games, he is an early adult now.

Third, when he was a young kid we modified his Android gadget so that he couldn't install the apps. To play games, he has to use the computer that we put in the family room so that we can see whatever he has access to. Kids still need a lot more supervision and guidance than care about their privacy, if they get permission to play online games with their Android gadget they will be able to play anywhere and it will be hard for me to see the small screen from afar so we can't fully monitor him. Since children still have a lot of curiosity and often try to find their curiosity, I wanted to prevent my child's curiosity from killing him.

Fourth, we never make online games a child's babysitter, so when he plays games, we remain by his side to see children's interactions with games and direct him to the right thoughts about the games he is facing.

Fifth, when he was a young kid, we always provide educational games. This does not mean that we provide educational materials presented online as an online game but are games that have educational elements. As an example of the famous online games the Minecraft, and for the simpler games, for example, online games that are available here. Before I introduce online games to my son, I always try these games first and look at the reviews so I can be sure that these games are suitable for my child's age. Like the games on Plays.org, at a glance I see that the online games here are good and have educational value, some teach physics concepts such as gravity, some teach about mathematics, some even invite players to express themselves through the sound produced by their mouths, this is very interesting to play with the kids!

The screenshot of an online games rules that using child's sound to control the games

The most important principle that we apply here is: good games should increase children's curiosity to learn about the games and get positive values ​​from the games. Thus, children can develop their personalities by playing games. For example, from playing online games my son became interested in world history and philosophy and learned Japanese from his own will until now when he was an early adult age. For us, this is very good because he taught himself a lot in-depth, so we were surprised by his knowledge which turned out to have surpassed the homeschooling curriculum that we applied.

Children are human beings who develop at different periods from their parents. We didn't evolve into the realm of online games back then, but here they are. That is why as wise parents, we cannot refuse or imprison children from their world, and we also can't just ignore them because online games do not all have a concern for children's psychological development. Parents are the child's first and foremost filter so that we can maximizing online games to build a child’s positive character.

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